Answer My Query » – Silver Light

OData: The Open Data Protocol

mtaulty — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:29:34 +0000

Mike asked me to write something about OData for this week’s MSDN Flash Newsletter – reproducing that below – mostly just a bit of fun as it’s hard to fit anything into these short articles. It’s hard to write an article to teach you anything about OData in 500 words. Why set out on that journey when we can do something “less boring instead”; Run up your browser. I recommend IE8 as it seems to have most control around viewing raw XML but you can use “View Source” in FireFox or Chrome. Remember in IE8 to switch off the lipstick that it applies to ATOM/RSS data by using the following menu options; Tools | Internet Options | Content | Feeds and Web Slices | Settings | Feed Reading View OFF Point it at http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog (the Netflix movie catalog in OData format) Notice that the default XML namespace is the open standard ATOM Publishing Protocol Query for Movie People: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/People . Notice that the default XML namespace is the open standard ATOM XML format Double extra bonus...(read more)

Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (6–Validation)

mtaulty — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:37:40 +0000

One of the strengths of WCF RIA Services is in its capabilities around the application of common validation logic on both the client tier and the service tier. If I take the simplest route to create a new Silverlight+RIA Services project as in File | New Project; and then make sure that I “switch on” RIA Services; and then add a new Entity Data Model for my Northwind database to the generated web application project; generating that model from the database with just a couple of tables into it (Categories and Products); giving me a nice small model; and then basing a Domain Service on that model, using Visual Studio to add another new item (Domain Service class) into my web application project; and in the wizard that pops up to generate the skeleton bits of service-side code for me I enable editing for my Product entity set but not for my Category entity set and I also ask Visual Studio to generate metadata classes for me as in the dialog below; then, with all that done, Visual studio will generate for me service...(read more)

Silverlight and WebSockets

mtaulty — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:03:01 +0000

I was intrigued by this post from Tomek which has links to a prototype of an application built with Silverlight but using WebSockets. It’s kind of interesting because running the application in IE9 gives me; now, the only bit of that application that’s actually Silverlight is the highlighted blue square which is providing a client side implementation of WebSockets to the browser based code which is just HTML/JS. If I run in Chrome I see; because Chrome has support for WebSockets already and so the sample switches out the Silverlight functionality. If you’ve not read about WebSockets then there’s a starter here and info on the protocol up here . If you’ve programmed with connected, TCP sockets then you know that the model is essentially; Server listens. Client connects. Connection stays open during lifetime of communication. Client and Server send stuff any time they like in a full-duplex manner. So, traditional sockets are great in that they allow full duplex comms such as when the server wants to notify the client...(read more)

“The Way of MEF”–UK Sessions with Glenn Block

mtaulty — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:56:57 +0000

We were very lucky to have Glenn Block in the UK recently and he did a whole morning talking about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) to a fairly packed room of around 120 developers on the UK Microsoft Campus. I was really pleased to be able to host Glenn but I also wanted to get the sessions filmed so that we could share them with people who couldn’t make it on the day. But in all honesty we (Microsoft) can be pretty cheap around some of this stuff and I didn’t have any money to pay for filming. But then the sun shone on me and Ian Smith ( UK .NET contractor, Silverlight Outsider , film buff, etc ) saved the day by dropping me a mail saying something like “Hey, I’m coming along – do you want me to film it?”. Naturally, the answer was “Yes, please” and Ian did a great job. As an aside; Ian filmed the sessions for free in his own time with his own kit and did the post-editing work on them. He does a tonne of that kind of work for the UK developer community. Ian does a better job than any of the paid-for...(read more)

Silverlight 4, MEF and MVVM: loading different “MEF Modules” in the same Container

Davide — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:19:10 +0000

Today I’ve finally found some time to make modifications in the “MEF MVVM” project on Codeplex in order to:

create a new module using WCF RIA Services and dynamically load this it inside the “MEF module container” described in the previous post;
use the INavigationContentLoader interface and MEF Metadata to share the same container for the various “MEF Modules”;
use the new Cosmopolitan theme available for Silverlight Navigation applications;
refactor the code of the ViewModel base class using the one available in the latest Prism drops;
refactor unit tests inserting an apposite Mock service.

The source code is available for download on Codeplex.

Happy Silverlighting!

Visual Studio Solution Navigator

mtaulty — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:05:15 +0000

From the Visual Studio blog, the “Solution Navigator” looks pretty cool… downloading…...(read more)

Debugging a “Silverlight Business Application” Out Of Browser

mtaulty — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:52:11 +0000

If you’re using RIA Services then you might be using the “Silverlight Business Application” template which has an issue with out-of-browser debugging which causes it to throw an exception rather than start your debugging session properly. Fortunately, it’s an easy workaround documented below; “ Debugging an OOB Silverlight Business Application ”...(read more)

WCF DataServices & the Processing Pipeline?

mtaulty — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:30:55 +0000

I spent quite a lot of time with WCF Data Services (‘Astoria’/’ADO.NET Data Services’ as it was) in its first iteration. It’s a framework that I really like so I’m feeling a little guilty that I haven’t found time to completely revisit it as it becomes part of a ‘much bigger thing’ (i.e. OData ) and as it got rev’d in .NET 4.0 and (from a client perspective) Silverlight 4. I have been doing some of that revisiting in a piecemeal fashion though and there’s good material out there. For instance I came across articles such as Elisa’s and the main MSDN library page which give you enhancements such as; the DataServiceCollection type on the client side to do a tonne of binding goodness and auto-change tracking server driven paging obtaining a total row count for an entity set either with the data or on its own as a separate piece of data client side projections (i.e. selecting just the columns of data that you want) more flexibility around how you plug in your server side data in order so that you can expose;...(read more)

OData Slides from the NxtGen User Group Festival

mtaulty — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:48:32 +0000

I did a short session on the Open Data Protocol (OData) last week at the NxtGen User Group and I thought I’d share the slides here. There are quite a few builds/animations in that slide-deck so I’d suggest that downloading it will produce a better experience than viewing it on SlideShare....(read more)

Ooyala and Silverlight Bring the Beach Volleyball Open to You, Live!

Silverlight Team — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 03:12:36 +0000

Exciting news for beach volleyball fans: watch live coverage of the AVP Nivea Tour Hermosa Beach on AVP.com powered by Ooyala’s new Silverlight player.

Check out the Ooyala blog and learn about the Ooyala player for Silverlight, which leverages the Silverlight Media Framework. Most importantly, watch and enjoy the action unfold on Saturday, July 17th from 1:30pm-6.30pm Pacific Time over at AVP.com.